Don’t tell me Bill O’Reilly doesn’t know Glenn Beck’s history of making racialattacks on President Obama. So there was simply no excuse for the show to trot out Beck to “weigh in,” as FoxNews.com put it, as to whether “Obama’s African American voter ad (is) offensive” without noting that history. But that’s exactly what happened on The O’Reilly Factor last night.

It could be that O’Reilly (and Fox) was trying to help an ex-colleague rehabilitate his image. Buzzfeed had an article earlier in the day about Beck’s “aggressive transformation of the Glenn Beck brand, from the right-wing ranter-in-chief he played on Fox, to the red-state Prophet of Love he’s casting himself as today — a wholesome hybrid of Oprah Winfrey, Walt Disney, and Mahatma Gandhi, the role models he now frequently name-checks.”

Still, Gandhi or not, any news network worth a “fair and balanced” motto would have made at least some reference to Beck’s racial animosity toward Obama. But not Fox. They even went the extra-deceptive mile of posting a graphic of Beck’s face over the words, “ENTERING THE NO SPIN ZONE.”

“Beck is following the presidential race,” O’Reilly said innocuously, before playing an Obama radio ad called, “We’ve got your back,” aimed at African Americans.

The ad is clearly an attempt to rally black Americans both by telling them, via a series of clips from Obama speeches, that he has their backs and by having a funky back-up chorus sing that they’ve got his back.

Predictably, Beck had a problem with it, though perhaps in his new-found spirit of Oprah, he didn't mention whether he still thinks Obama has a "deep-seated hatred" of white people. “Isn’t the president supposed to have our back?” Beck asked, presumably missing half the point of the ad. Beck also had a problem “with the things he’s promising.” Beck continued, “A real leader doesn’t snare you in and suck you in and say, ‘depend on me, depend on me.’” So Beck knew all along that Obama was saying he had Americans' backs.

O’Reilly cagily played the “good cop” Obama defender – maybe hoping we wouldn’t notice whom he had just slyly pawned off on us – by saying that Obama was speaking to the African American community. “That’s the difference between you and me and Barack Obama. Barack Obama is a big government guy and he’s telling the African American community, ‘I’m gonna continue to give you more stuff if I’m re-elected.’”

As O’Reilly spoke, Beck kept interrupting by telling him to “say it, say the ‘M’ word.” For a moment, I thought Beck was instructing O’Reilly to say the “n-word.”

“I don’t think he’s a Marxist, Beck,” “good cop” O’Reilly replied. “I don’t think he wants to seize your mansion north of Dallas.” O’Reilly went on to note that “with Marxism, you’re talking a whole seizure of property thing. People should understand that.”

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Beck plugged this crap on his show earlier the same day. He even included “now, I’m not a racist…”

Beck’s favourite line is “Now, I’m not…” right before he proves without a shadow of a doubt he is. “Now, I’m not a racist,” “now, I’m not promoting violence,” “Now, I’m not saying we should be violently hateful towards anything I don’t like”.

Despite that the only times he agreed with them were during the stimulus discussions in his early presidency, before he “went maverick” and decided to include small businesses, schools and urban reform as causes worthy of stimulus money.

Hey, wasn’t that the time RW hosts started calling it the “porkulus?”

Everything else, Obama was either pigeonholed, or he didn’t like the compromise, and eliminated the Republican end the second it was undeniable their contribution didn’t work.

Beck has no credibility even on Fox anymore. I was shocked to see a radio company give him money to spew hatred, and even more shocked to see O’Reilly give him a platform to discuss his biased opinions about race. The one thing Beck should have been given is a long rest to think about the impact of his words and public proclamations. And then maybe an opportunity to apologize.

’Cause, when it comes to getting sustained insight into what African-Americans will respond to, who better to ask than a lily-white, rightwing nut-job with no marketable skill other than the ability to factfromass on TV and radio . . .